Very soon we will not be reading about gardens and Roman sites but walking among them! So, let me get to the final set of gardens: Great Dixter, and Kew, which are also the final two venues we will visit. In the mid to late 20th century, Great Dixter was developed by gardener and prolific …
I began these notes to give tour members some useful information about the sites we will be visiting and to explain why we are visiting those places among the hundreds of other gardens and Roman sites in England. In the case of Hidcote and Sissinghurst, the reason for including them is easy: I've not yet …
The feature photo for this set of notes comes from neither Roman Bath nor even late medieval Bath. “Oh! Who can be ever tired of Bath?” dates from 19th-century Regency Bath and Jane Austen's delightful send up of Bath's social primacy and gothic novels' popularity, Northanger Abbey. I recommend it to anyone who likes satire …
From the Romans to the Tudors for this next set of notes, but I'll return to the Romans in Bath for the next installment. This post, though, includes castles and gardens related to two wives of Henry VIII. We chose these sites in part for their historical connections but in large because there are features …
Depending on an on-time arrival in Manchester, our English garden and villa tour will begin appropriately with the Mamucium Roman Fort and Gardens Reconstruction. The key word here, however, is reconstruction. It is a site I am not familiar with, so I’ll simply note that Manucium, now a part of an Urban Historical Park, dates …
Of all the lovely landscape gardens one can visit in England, we settled on Rousham for two primary reasons: it remains essentially unchanged in its 18th-century house and landscape design by William Kent, and it is of a scale more easily comprehended than Stowe (250 acres) or Chatsworth (150 acres). In its 25 acres, though, …
Continue reading "English Gardenscapes with Shades of Roman Britain Tour Note 2: Rousham"
(This series is written specifically to provide background information for folks traveling with me and my colleague Samuel Pezzillo to visit gardens and Roman sites in England in June 2024 . Others interested are certainly welcomed to read along with us.) An overview of decorative gardens in Britain can begin with Roman villa gardens bordered …
After Eden 